


when the word is made flesh

by bessemerprocess



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Caretaking, Criminal Minds Kink Meme 4, Episode: s06e18 Lauren, F/M, Recovery, Scars, bodies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-02
Updated: 2011-05-02
Packaged: 2017-10-18 21:37:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/193563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bessemerprocess/pseuds/bessemerprocess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Lauren. Hotch and Prentiss relearning changed bodies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when the word is made flesh

_Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh._ -Leonard Cohen

It's the first time Hotch has seen Emily naked since Ian Doyle shoved a wooden stake into her abdomen. She's tentative as she lifts her shirt, and he remembers what it was like after Foyet. He had felt so damaged, so violated, so marked by Foyet's evil. She had kissed him then, kissed him long and hard and said, "We all have scars."

Her's is red and angry, even with all modern medicine can do. He wants to lay a hand over it, and say, "This too shall pass," but he can't. Nothing is ever truly over, not for them. So, instead, he moves to her other scars, older scars that he knows by heart. He kisses his way up her wrist, the scar from the car accident that was no accident at all, up to her neck, a tiny silver patch caused by Benjamin Cyrus.

"Hotch," she says, and lays a hand over his hip and the last of Foyet's scars.

"Shh," he replies, kissing his way to her mouth.

She kisses him back, fierce and unrelenting.

He works his way back down, over a scar on her shoulder, one he doesn't know the story to, down her rib cage, until he reaches the latest scar in the collection. He'd like to think it would be the last, but that is optimism he can't afford.

"You did this for me once," he says, and gently kisses just below her scar.

"I did," she replies, and then pulls him up to kiss her again.

"You said, scars mean that the injury is over and all that is left is the healing," he says, running his hands down her body. She responds by easing her thumb over his nipple.

"I did," she says again. "This time it just seems harder." She sighs as his fingers dip between her thighs.

"Invisible scars are harder to heal." He slips inside her, and she bucks against him, responding like there hasn't been surgery and a funeral and lies and months since the last time they were together.

They move together, pressing their healing bodies against each other, without missing a beat. It's comfortable and safe here, he thinks, as their skin touches.

He moves his thumb over her, just like she's always liked, and she gasps as she comes around him. The scars don't change anything, they never have. Here they are just two bodies, not broken, not tarnished.

She reaches up and touches his face as he comes.

 _Show me your hands. Do they have scars from giving? Show me your feet. Are they wounded in service? Show me your heart. Have you left a place for divine love?_ -Fulton J. Sheen


End file.
